Musician buys not one, but two Action Comics #1 back issues on the speculator market

Louder/Metal Hammer reports a drummer from System of a Down band bought not just one, but two back issues of Action Comics' premiere from 1938:

System Of A Down drummer John Dolmayan, who is also the proprietor of Torpedo Comics, a store in Irvine, CA, and the publisher of two comic books, Ascensia and Dead Samurai, has purchased a copy of what's been described as the "Mona Lisa of books": the first issue of Action Comics.

Dolmayan purchased the comic, which was published in 1938 and features the first appearance of Superman, for $825,000 – more than ten times the average annual salary in the US – and it's his second copy.

Earlier this year, Dolyman shared a picture of another copy, saying, "I dreamed of owning this book for years. I know it’s just a materialistic possession, but damn, it makes me happy when I look at it."

The drummer's latest copy of the comic was sold at New York Comic Con earlier this month by Metropolis Collectibles.

So here we have an example of somebody who not only makes a joke out of the medium by buying classic back issues he's bound to be storing out of sight, he even buys more than one copy of the same issue to virtue signal. And this can even give a clue why the NYCC isn't a good convention if this is what they're going to be party to, rather than focus more fully promoting the art form as ideal reading material. IMO, conventions have to move away from giving any backing to the speculator market, and sadly, that's unlikely to happen, even though distancing themselves from said market could do a lot of good for the comics industry's reputation.

Healthcare and the four color panels

The Scientist writes about how the comics medium can help convey the topics of medical care:

Nearly two decades ago, Ian Williams enrolled in a fine arts program after completing his medical education. “I had two sides of my career,” said Williams, now a physician at The Hove Practice and cartoonist. “I had the medicine and I had the art side of it, and the languages of those two worlds were completely different.”

Hoping to find some common ground in these fields, he signed up for a master’s degree in medical humanities at Swansea University. During this time, he encountered a couple of graphic novels about cancer, prompting him to choose healthcare narratives in comics and graphic novels as his dissertation topic.

He soon went down a rabbit hole and found other comics about cancer and mental health and coined the term “Graphic Medicine” to denote the intersection of medicine and graphic novels. As a hobby, in 2007, he set up a website reviewing some of the graphic novels that had medical context. “Putting up this website literally changed my life,” Williams said, explaining that people soon got in touch with him to share their own experiences of using comics for healthcare education or to share their medical experiences.

Today, his graphic medicine website—that Williams coedits—catalogs graphic novels that can help in education and patient care. Members of this online community highlight the role that comics can play in healthcare, with the discipline broadly including memoirs of illness, educational comics for medical students and patients, and much more. In addition to the online community, people involved with graphic medicine also hold conferences around the world, with like-minded people sharing their experiences of using comics in healthcare.

With increasing popularity of graphic medicine across the globe, experts have also highlighted the utility of comics to critique the medical profession as well as in patient care. Researchers even explored the therapeutic possibilities of this discipline, with some of them arguing that drawing can help patients resolve their chaos through creative expression.

It's just like various other forms of science, where researchers and specialists are recognizing how useful they can be as educational tools. I think it's great comics have come to be viewed as a perfect vehicle for medical research, and I'm sure it'll avail the medical industry in the future.

What would be the best tablet for digital readers?

That's what BGR is talking about, and why you shouldn't be fooled by a lousy one on the market:

There are several e-readers you can pick from if you prefer to read digital books. You can even use them to read graphic novels and comic books, but if you are looking to flip through pages of your favorite superhero, you may want to consider one specific Kindle. Especially if you want to read a comic book in color, there is only one choice among Amazon's Kindle e-reader lineup. The Kindle Colorsoft, as the name suggests, includes colors instead of the Kindle's typical black and white text and backgrounds. It's an excellent pick for comic book fans who wish to view their large collection of digital comic books on Amazon in color. Each page, spread, and sheet of the comic or graphic novel is brought to life through nitride LEDs that, according to Amazon, improve color and enhance the overall brightness of the screen so each issue mirrors its physical edition.

Amazon has a few options available for the Kindle Colorsoft, all at various price points. The starting price is around $289.99 for the Kindle Colorsoft. The Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition is around $319.99, with the Kindle Colorsoft Kids being about $299.99. There's also the Amazon Kindle Scribe Colorsoft for a bit more at around $679.99. You may even be able to find a comic based on some great movies you didn't know were comic adaptations.

But there are some editions that don't always have the best color palettes available:

Some tech reviews found that the color on the Kindle Colorsoft may not be as full of life as physical comics or other e-readers. When compared to another tablet — specifically an iPad, which may be worth buying if you want louder colors — the color on the Kindle Colorsoft seems to be muted and dull. The color on the iPad appears to be brighter and much more vibrant. Still, you do get color on the Kindle Colorsoft for a lower price than the cost of a new iPad, which can start at around $449.

Which is expensive, but, as I've learned over the years, tablets can have important advantages, and if to read comics on them, they can come in useful, so you have to hope you can find the best operational tablets on the market for digital comics consumption.

But also, lest we forget, just like the tablets, you have to choose the comics carefully by merit too, because bad stories aren't worth wasting good hard drives over. Good stories are what make the modern technology worth it.

Large format comic by Liefeld actually makes it into the Guinness records

Guinness World Records announced what they consider the largest comic book ever published to date:

Comic book action is getting supersized, after VeeFriends' (USA) Gentle Giant character expanded into record-breaking proportions at New York Comic Con (NYCC) this 9 October.

Taking the title as the largest comic book published in history, VeeFriends Comic Book #22: Gentle Giant measured in at a colossal 7,312.76 cm² (7 ft² 125.48 in²), featuring dimensions of 106.6 cm (3.5 ft) tall, 68.6 cm (2.25 ft) wide, and 0.45 cm (0.01 ft) thick. That’s roughly four times bigger than the average comic!

On its own, that might sound flattering, but then, look who drew the cover of this allegedly record-breaking "masterpiece":

Produced as part of the VeeFriends entertainment and character franchise from founder Gary Vaynerchuk (aka “GaryVee” on social media), the record-setting edition had a special cover illustrated by Rob Liefeld, creator of Deadpool and co-founder of Image Comics.

Oh, for crying out loud. Why must they sully everything by bringing in an artist who's proven very poor in his track record? The figure on the cover of the huge copy looks as mediocre in design and awkward in anatomy as various other examples from Liefeld's portfolio, to say nothing of simply uninspired, yet they overlook at all that?

Maybe what the Guinness researchers should really be doing is producing a category highlighting the worst of comics artwork, because Liefeld's would make a great starting entry in the display, followed by only so many other examples in the past decade that were definitely unappealing as they were editorially mandated. For now, that VeeFriends would dampen the impact of the record by putting such an awful artist's work on the cover is dismaying, and the day will come when somebody says it's absurd they would make a mockery of what could've been a great entry in Guinness history by continuing to grant legitimacy to a bad artist who did no favors for comicdom years before, and has since been followed by other artists who, even if their takes on anatomy aren't as incompetent, are still very uninspired and the character designs are stunningly ugly. We don't need more like that, and publishers have to stop hiring Liefeld and turning perceptions of the medium soggy.

If Darwyn Cooke exploited Will Eisner's Spirit for leftist propaganda, that's disturbing and devastating

There used to be a site called Comics Bulletin, which was in operation until about 5 years ago. Now, it appears other sources in the UK have since bought the domain and put it to use for what's basically a new specialty site with a blog format. And here's one of their entries from over a year ago, which most unfortunately is leftist apologia for the post-911 era, and tells something rather eyebrow raising about the late artist Darwyn Cooke's run on the new Spirit volume from the late 2000s, adapted from Will Eisner's famous comics from 1940-52 by DC Comics, which apparently had acquired a license for it 2 decades ago, after Eisner's passing:

While not as well known as Batman’s or as colorful as Dick Tracy’s, like other masked heroes the Spirit has a long, well-established list of rogues. The differentiating factor, however, is that The Spirit’s rogues gallery is primarily made up of femme fatales. This is one of the few things the terrible Frank Miller movie got right, but even then it overlooked the most prominent of them all, P’Gell. From her first appearance in The Spirit Section #332 (October 6, 1946), she made an immediate impression thanks to her striking beauty, which Cooke gives a modern update in The Spirit #2.

Before proceeding any further, the character of Hussein must be discussed. Islamophobia was rampant in the post-9/11 world of the Bush Presidency. As a result, it would be easy for this character to be a racial caricature and no one would bat an eye. Given their introduction on the issue’s very first page, that may be the initial impression given. He’s smarmy and vile, but also depicted in such an unserious manner where readers feel he can be dismissed out of hand. But as the story unfolds, Hussein proves again and again to be a worthy foil to The Spirit – while also being much more than he initially presents himself.

The issue’s end when he and the Spirit walk off together in a Casablanca homage is Cooke’s exclamation point on this character’s inclusion – that the rampant and accepted Islamaphobia of that time was just as wrong as the offensive depiction of Ebony in the original Eisner comics. A welcome addition to The Spirit lore, Hussein would resurface throughout the duration of Cooke’s run.

First off, I don't think the Spirit was comprised "primarily" of femme fatales, even if there were several such notable characters there. It did have male adversaries too. That potential flaw aside, I can't remember if I'd fully considered it earlier, but if Cooke was applying a far-left vision to a comic originally created by a guy whose last GN gave focus to Islamic antisemitism as much as any other form...that's very disturbing, and easily worse than dumbing down the character design for a gal like Catwoman. It can also make one wonder if the focus on femme fatales in this new comic by Cooke has a different meaning to it than previously thought. And, lest I forget, is the character of Hussein an allusion to Saddam?

As for what's said about Ebony White, the writer - doubtless totally deliberately - obfuscated the differences between race and religion, and it should be pointed out that save for the unfortunate character design in the Golden Age comics, Ebony was depicted respectably and heroically, and Eisner himself wrote in his introduction to his Fagin the Jew GN some time before his death that he hadn't considered that the character design for Ebony was the same thing he took issue with when it came to antisemitic propaganda caricatures. None of which is brought up in the modern puff piece, and the writer should be ashamed of himself for giving his backing to a story that could've been written out of contempt for somebody who was more successful than Cooke ever was.

It shouldn't have to be pointed out that the writer of this puff piece insulted 911 Families when he wrote this retrospective, and provides no concrete proof to explain why disapproval of the Religion of Peace itself is wrong. I remember when the original Comics Bulletin site once posted a ludicrous declaration they didn't want to read Dynamite publishins any longer. Which was stupid enough, but now we have a new bunch that's turning even worse propaganda than their predecessors. And that's not good for the medium's reputation.

Dungeon Crawler Carl gets a comics series, and D'Orc comic gets a movie adaptation

In case it wasn't what was announced before when they previously reported about it, Variety's announced the fantasy novel series will be seeing a comics adaptation, by which I guess they mean an ongoing (and there's also a webtoon adaptation):

New achievement! “Dungeon Crawler Carl” is getting a comic series!

The popular fantasy, LitRPG books by author Matt Dinniman will receive an ongoing comic book series from Vault Comics. The double-sized, 48-page first issue will launch in comic book stores beginning in January 2027. The following issues will be released monthly.

The new comic will serialize the hit “Dungeon Crawler Carl” webtoon series. Writer Tevagah and Laurel Pursuit Studios, which provides artwork, will make the jump from the webtoon to the ongoing comic series. Artist Kuzomari also joins the series, which will have scaled-up art that fits the comic book page.

I know there's been some fantasy books that've been adapted, including Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone, so it looks like we have here another, similar example in preparation. But it'd be a lot more impressice than it sounds if they hadn't preceded this with graded variant copies. Again, that takes away from the better impact an announcement like this could have, and if it's only being sold as pamphlets, that's again a flaw.

On the other hand, Deadline's announced the comics series D'Orc will be getting a movie adaptation:

Sony Pictures has acquired live-action film rights to the bestselling comic book series D’Orc, with its author and illustrator Brett Bean attached to adapt for the screen.

The film plot is under wraps, but the comic book series marries swashbuckling humor with sprawling magical mythology and creatures wrapped in a gritty, action-driven fantasy adventure. Published by Image Comics, the series debuted earlier this year and became an instant bestseller Its first issue sold out before its release and is now on its eighth printing. Subsequent issues also have gone into multiple printings.

As yet more pamphlets, right? Seriously, I just don't understand why the creators want to do it that way, when here, they have a big opportunity to publish it as a whole GN in paperback or hardcover, and find more audience that way if it's sold in regular bookstores. Fantasy adventure can be great, and maybe the movie will be too, if they avoid being PC. But the opportunity to reach a wider audience in a format more appealing so far seems to have been all but missed, and that's a shame.

Whitney Museum's Roy Lichtenstein exhibition

Artefuse wrote about an exhibition of the art of Roy Lichtenstein, a now famous artist who drew inspirations from comics artwork, at the Whitney Museum, and the odd thing about this review is that the writer says Lichtenstein "appropriated":

Roy Lichtenstein was a real New Yorker. There are not many of those anymore. He was born and raised on the Upper West Side in a middle-class family and eventually became one of the most recognizable artists of the Pop Art movement, but his work extends beyond the comic-book paintings most people associate with him. [...]

The exhibition includes plenty of famous works, mixed with lesser-known pieces that, according to the Whitney, have not been seen in a long time. The appropriation is part of what makes the exhibition interesting: cartoons imitating life, life imitating art, and then back to life again. The main dark room on the west side has one of the best layouts. It keeps the story moving, almost like a storyboard, except this is Lichtenstein’s own comic-book retrospective of his art. The images pull you in, but the longer you look, the more you realize how carefully everything has been constructed.

Appropriation makes Lichtenstein’s work more interesting and complicated to me, and this is where the exhibition really has something to say. He borrowed from comic strips, advertisements, and other artists, transforming familiar popular images into something that looked unmistakably like his own. The images still look mechanical, but up close, they are handmade. But that raises a question that still follows contemporary art: when does borrowing become an original act, and who decides?

Oh, for heaven's sake. This sounds like an attempt to minimize the impact of his art, even as he does speak favorably of Lichtenstein's portfolio. I think what he drew in his time is impressive, does a good service for comics by extension, and to make it sound more like he "borrowed" yet isn't being original is trivializing his influence. On the other hand, they should consider how comics artwork today in the mainstream became much duller, perhaps as a very regrettable effect of the cancel culture and censorship of the past decade. I've seen some examples from Lichtenstein's art that are much livelier than say, the dark crime noir overrated comics writers like Ed Brubaker are producing, and what Lichtenstein turned out makes for a far better source of inspiration.

So could we please consider that artists like Lichtenstein are the figures we should really look to for what makes great art and what to emulate? I think that's what should be considered now. And the news site's writer shouldn't be implying the late artist was "unoriginal". On the contrary, Lichtenstein had a very idea of what to draw inspiration from in his time.

Jewish creators exhibition in Milwaukee

The Shepherd Express of Milwaukee wrote about the history of the medium's Jewish contributors, now the subject of an exhibition at their local Jewish museum:

Superman was invented in 1938 by two Jewish kids from Cleveland, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster. They grew up on a diet of pulp sci-fi and Sunday comic strips, fields where Jewish Americans held a prominent place. Their idea for a superhero-in-disguise, his alien origins concealed beneath the blandly affable image of Clark Kent, encoded their experiences as children of refugee immigrants in a society where difference could be dangerous as Kryptonite.

Their stories and their work, amongst many others, are at the heart of “Chosen Heroes: The Jewish Comics Experience” at Jewish Museum Milwaukee. Although the exhibition’s scope is wide, much of it is focused on the Jewish pioneers of America’s comic book industry, a once reviled trade that quickly colonized the imagination of adolescents and gradually ascended to the summit of world pop culture. By 2018, half of the 10 highest grossing movies of the year were based directly on comic books. The DC and Marvel universes were created by Jewish American demiurges.

“Jewish artists invented the modern superhero,” says Molly Dubin, the Jewish Museum’s curator. “They were second generation Americans, and it wasn’t by chance that they became so influential in the comic book industry.” Excluded by antisemitism from many economic sectors, American Jews took an early lead in turning movies into an industry, made fortunes from rags and scrap metal and mined the untapped market for African American music. “Comic books were a fledgling endeavor,” Dubin continues. “It was an opportunity for them to step into a new creative space and make it their own.”

Yes, and one that's since been degraded by modern ingrates while their apologists won't say anything about it. And while the article noticeably does employ the word "refugee", do they still believe using "immigrants" is required, even though there are differences to be considered? I'm tired of all this subtle propaganda in favor of illegal immigrants who enter countries without vetting, which Europe is now bearing the brunt of, and leftist comics creators vehemently refuse to address honestly, if they even say anything about it at all, no matter how much damage it's doing.

The origin stories of several golden age superheroes crafted by Jewish authors are strangely similar. Superman, Bob Kane’s (Robert Kahn’s) Batman and Stan Lee’s (Stanley Lieber’s) Spider-Man all lost their parents to crime and catastrophe. Encoded memories of pogroms? All three lived in disguise, concealing crucial parts of themselves, much like ethno-religious immigrants wrestling with the opposing demands of heritage and assimilation. All three knew there was a lot of bad in the Promised Land of America, albeit, their battles were initially encoded as crime fighting.

“Superman is not Jewish but stood for Jewish values,” Dubin says. “The comic books championed the oppressed. The artists used the medium to speak to what was going on.”

Yes, but today they champion victimology, recalling when Dan Jurgens exploited a title that was one of his leading assignments years before to push pro-Islamic propaganda, along with whitewashed perceptions of illegal immigration. As though somebody who's "poor" couldn't possibly commit criminal offenses in any way. That was a disservice to the memory of Siegel and Shuster, and if Jurgens hasn't publicly apologized for his propaganda piece, that's a problem.

Exhibitions like these are always admirable, but if they won't explore recent history objectively, it can and does dilute the quality and impact of the overall exhibition and history. Especially when they don't acknowledge that what Siegel, Shuster and Lee experienced is still an issue today. As a result, what good will these exhibitions do if they don't acnkowledge them through a modern lens?